Saturnsecond largest planet of the solar system in mass and size and the sixth in distance from the Sun. In the night sky Saturn is easily visible to the unaided eye as a nontwinkling point of light, and, when viewed in even a small telescope, the planet girded with its magnificent rings is arguably the most sublime object in the solar system. Saturn is designated by the symbol ♄.

Saturn’s name comes from the Roman god of agriculture, who is equated with the Greek deity Cronus, one of the Titans and the father of Zeus (the Roman god Jupiter). As the farthest of the planets known to ancient observers, Saturn also was noted to be the slowest-moving. At a distance from the Sun that is 9.5 times as far as Earth’s, Saturn takes nearly 30 Earth years to make one solar revolution. The Italian astronomer Galileo in 1610 was the first to observe Saturn with a telescope. Although he saw a strangeness in Saturn’s appearance, the low resolution of his instrument did not allow him to discern the true nature of the planet’s rings.

Saturn occupies almost 60 percent of Jupiter’s volume but has only about one-third of its mass and the lowest mean density—about 70 percent that of water—of any known object in the solar system. Hypothetically, Saturn would float in an ocean large enough to hold it. Both Saturn and Jupiter resemble stars in that their bulk chemical composition is dominated by hydrogen. Also, as is the case for Jupiter, the tremendous pressure in Saturn’s deep interior maintains the hydrogen there in a fluid metallic state. Saturn’s structure and evolutionary history, however, differ significantly from those of its larger counterpart. Like the other giant, or Jovian, planets—Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune—Saturn has extensive systems of moons (natural satellites) and rings, which may provide clues to its origin and evolution as well as to those of the solar system. Saturn’s moon Titan is distinguished from all other moons in the solar system by the presence of a significant atmosphere, one that is denser than that of any of the terrestrial planets except Venus.

The greatest advances in knowledge of Saturn, as well as of most of the other planets, have come from deep-space probes. Four spacecraft have visited the Saturnian system—Pioneer 11 in 1979, Voyagers 1 and 2 in the two years following, and, after an almost quarter-century hiatus, Cassini-Huygens beginning in 2004. The first three missions were short-term flybys, but Cassini went into orbit around Saturn for several years of investigations, while its Huygens probe parachuted through the atmosphere of Titan and reached its surface, becoming the first spacecraft to land on a moon other than Earth’s.

Basic astronomical data

Saturn orbits the Sun at a mean distance of 1,427,000,000 km (887 million miles). Its proximity to Earth is never less than about 1.2 billion km (746 million miles), and its phase angle—the angle that it makes with the Sun and Earth—never exceeds about 6°. Saturn seen from the vicinity of Earth thus always appears nearly fully illuminated, a limitation to observation finally overcome by the sidelit and backlit views enabled by deep-space probes.

Like Jupiter and most of the other planets, Saturn has a regular orbit—that is, its motion around the Sun is prograde (in the same direction that the Sun rotates) and has a small eccentricity (noncircularity) and inclination to the ecliptic, the plane of Earth’s orbit. Unlike Jupiter, however, Saturn’s rotational axis is tilted substantially—by 26.7°—to its orbital plane. The tilt gives Saturn seasons, as on Earth, but each season lasts more than seven years. Another result is that Saturn’s rings, which lie in the plane of its equator, are presented to observers on Earth at opening angles ranging from 0° (edge on) to nearly 30°. The view of Saturn’s rings cycles over a 30-year period. Earth-based observers can see the rings’ sunlit northern side for about 15 years, then, in an analogous view, the sunlit southern side for the next 15 years. In the short intervals when Earth crosses the ring plane, the rings are all but invisible.

Saturn has no single rotation period. Cloud motions in its massive upper atmosphere trace out a variety of periods, which are as short as about 10 hours 10 minutes near the equator and increase with some oscillation to about 30 minutes longer at latitudes higher than 40°. Scientists have determined the rotation period of Saturn’s deep interior from that of its magnetic field, which is presumed to be rooted in the planet’s metallic-hydrogen outer core. Direct measurement of the field’s rotation is difficult because the field is highly symmetrical around the rotational axis. Radio outbursts from Saturn, which appear related to small irregularities in the magnetic field, show a period of 10 hours 39.4 minutes at the time of the Voyager encounters; this value was taken to be the magnetic field rotation period. A quarter century later, however, some measurements made by Cassini indicated that the field was rotating with a period 6–7 minutes longer. The time differences between the rotation periods of Saturn’s clouds and of its interior have been used to estimate wind velocities (see below The atmosphere). Other radio bursts with periods of about 10 hours 10 minutes originate with lightning in Saturn’s atmosphere.

Because the four giant planets have no solid surface in their outer layers, by convention the values for the radius and gravity of these planets are calculated at the level at which one bar of atmospheric pressure is exerted. By this measure, Saturn’s equatorial diameter is 120,536 km (74,898 miles). In comparison, its polar diameter is only 108,728 km (67,560 miles), or 10 percent smaller, which makes Saturn the most oblate (flattened at the poles) of all the planets in the solar system. Its oblate shape is apparent even in a small telescope. Even though Saturn rotates slightly slower than Jupiter, it is more oblate because its rotational acceleration cancels a larger fraction of the planet’s gravity at the equator. The equatorial gravity of the planet, 896 cm (29.4 feet) per second per second, is only 74 percent of its polar gravity. Saturn is 95 times as massive as Earth but occupies a volume 766 times greater. Its mean density of 0.69 gram per cubic cm is thus only some 12 percent of Earth’s. Saturn’s equatorial escape velocity—the velocity needed for an object, which includes individual atoms and molecules, to escape the planet’s gravitational attraction at the equator without having to be further accelerated—is nearly 36 km per second (80,000 miles per hour) at the one-bar level, compared with 11.2 km per second (25,000 miles per hour) for Earth. This high value indicates that there has been no significant loss of atmosphere from Saturn since its formation. For additional orbital and physical data, see the table.

The atmosphere

Viewed from Earth, Saturn has an overall hazy yellow-brown appearance. The surface that is seen through telescopes and in spacecraft images is actually a complex of cloud layers. Like the other giant planets, Saturn’s atmospheric circulation is dominated by zonal (east-west) flow. This manifests itself as a pattern of lighter and darker cloud bands similar to Jupiter’s, although Saturn’s bands are more subtly coloured and are wider near the equator. So low in contrast are the features in the cloud tops that it was not until the Voyager flyby encounters that Saturn’s atmospheric circulation could be studied in any detail.

When defined with respect to the rotation of its magnetic field, virtually all of Saturn’s atmospheric flows, or winds, are to the east—in the direction of rotation. Measured against the slower magnetic rotation rate observed by Cassini, the eastward flows are even more pronounced. The equatorial zone at latitudes below 20° shows a particularly active eastward flow having a maximum velocity close to 500 metres per second (1,800 km [1,100 miles] per hour). This feature is analogous to one on Jupiter but extends twice as wide in latitude and moves four times faster. By contrast, the highest winds on Earth occur in tropical cyclones, where in extreme cases sustained velocities may exceed 67 metres per second (240 km [150 miles] per hour).

The zonal flows are remarkably symmetrical about Saturn’s equator; that is, each one at a given northern latitude usually has a counterpart at a similar southern latitude. Strong eastward flows—those having eastward relative velocities in excess of 100 metres per second (360 km [225 miles] per hour)—are seen at 46° N and S and at about 60° N and S. Westward flows, which are nearly stationary in the magnetic field’s frame of reference, are seen at 40°, 55°, and 70° N and S. After the Voyager encounters, improvements in Earth-based instrumentation allowed observations of Saturn’s clouds at distance. Made over many years, these tended to agree with the detailed Voyager observations of the zonal flows and thus corroborated their stability over time. Some high-resolution observations of Saturn’s atmosphere showed a large drop in the velocity of the equatorial jet from 1996 to 2002. Analysis of data from the Cassini orbiter, however, suggests that any such velocity drop is confined to superficial layers of the atmosphere.

The general north-south symmetry suggests that the zonal flows may be connected in some fashion deep within the interior. Theoretical modeling of a deep-convecting fluid planet such as Saturn indicates that differential rotation tends to occur along cylinders aligned about the planet’s mean rotation axis (see the figure). Saturn’s atmosphere thus may be built of a series of coaxial cylinders aligned north-south, each rotating at a unique rate, which give rise to the zonal jets seen at the surface. The continuity of the cylinders may be broken at a point where they intersect a major discontinuity within Saturn, such as the core.

Saturn’s atmosphere shows many smaller-scale features similar to those found in Jupiter’s, such as red, brown, and white spots, bands, eddies, and vortices, that vary over a fairly short time. However, in addition to having a much blander appearance, Saturn’s atmosphere is less active than Jupiter’s on a small scale. A spectacular exception occurred during September–November 1990, when a large, light-coloured storm system appeared near the equator, expanded to a size exceeding 20,000 km (12,400 miles), and eventually spread around the equator before fading. Storms similar in impressiveness to this “Great White Spot” (so named in analogy with Jupiter’s Great Red Spot) have been observed at about 30-year intervals dating back to the late 19th century. This is close to Saturn’s orbital period of 29.4 years, which suggests that these storms are seasonal phenomena.

Initial analysis of data from the Voyager spacecraft indicated that the planet’s atmosphere is 91 percent molecular hydrogen by mass and is thus the most hydrogen-rich atmosphere in the solar system. Helium, which is measured indirectly, makes up another 6 percent and is less abundant relative to hydrogen compared with a gas having the composition of the Sun. If hydrogen, helium, and other elements were present in the same proportions as in the Sun’s atmosphere, Saturn’s atmosphere would be about 71 percent hydrogen and 28 percent helium by mass. According to some models, helium may have settled out of Saturn’s outer layers, but more-recent research has suggested that the Voyager analysis underestimated the helium fraction in Saturn’s atmosphere, which may lie closer to the value in the Sun.

Other major molecules observed in Saturn’s atmosphere are methane and ammonia, which are two to five times more abundant relative to hydrogen than in a gas of solar composition. Hydrogen sulfide and water are suspected to be major constituents of the deeper atmosphere but have not yet been detected. Minor molecules that have been detected spectroscopically from Earth include phosphine, carbon monoxide, and germane. Such molecules would not be present in detectable amounts in a hydrogen-rich atmosphere in chemical equilibrium. They may be nonequilibrium products of reactions at high pressure and temperature in Saturn’s deep atmosphere well below the observable clouds. A number of nonequilibrium hydrocarbons are observed in Saturn’s stratosphere: acetylene, ethane, and, possibly, propane and methyl acetylene. All of the latter may be produced by photochemical effects (see photochemical reaction) from solar ultraviolet radiation or, at higher latitudes, by energetic electrons precipitating from Saturn’s radiation belts (see below The magnetic field and magnetosphere). (A similar molecular composition is observed in Jupiter’s atmosphere, for which similar chemical processes are inferred; see Jupiter: Proportions of constituents.)

Astronomers on Earth have analyzed the refraction (bending) of starlight and radio waves from spacecraft passing through Saturn’s atmosphere to gain information on atmospheric temperature over depths corresponding to pressures of one-millionth of a bar to 1.3 bars. At pressures below 1 millibar, the temperature is roughly constant at about 140 to 150 kelvins (K; −208 to −190 °F, −133 to −123 °C). A stratosphere, where temperatures steadily decline with increasing pressure, extends downward from 1 to 60 millibars, at which level the coldest temperature in Saturn’s atmosphere, 82 K (−312 °F, −191 °C), is reached. At higher pressures (deeper levels) the temperature increases once again. This region is analogous to the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere, the troposphere, in which the increase of temperature with pressure follows the thermodynamic relation for compression of a gas without gain or loss of heat. The temperature is 135 K (−217 °F, −138 °C) at a pressure of 1 bar, and it continues to increase at higher pressures.

Saturn’s visible layer of clouds is formed from molecules of minor compounds that condense in the hydrogen-rich atmosphere. Although particles formed from photochemical reactions are seen suspended high in the atmosphere at levels corresponding to pressures of 20–70 millibars, the main clouds commence at a level where the pressure exceeds 400 millibars, with the highest cloud deck thought to be formed of solid ammonia crystals. The base of the ammonia cloud deck is predicted to occur at a depth corresponding to about 1.7 bars, where the ammonia crystals dissolve into the hydrogen gas and disappear abruptly. Nearly all information about deeper cloud layers has been obtained indirectly by constructing chemical models of the behaviour of compounds expected to be present in a gas of near solar composition following the temperature-pressure profile of Saturn’s atmosphere. The bases of successively deeper cloud layers occur at 4.7 bars (ammonium hydrosulfide crystals) and at 10.9 bars (water-ice crystals with aqueous ammonia droplets). Although all of the clouds mentioned above would be colourless in the pure state, the actual clouds of Saturn display various shades of yellow, brown, and red. These colours are apparently produced by chemical impurities; phosphorus-containing molecules are a prime candidate.

Even at the extremely high pressures found deeper in Saturn’s atmosphere, the minimum atmospheric temperature of 82 K is too high for molecular hydrogen to exist as a gas and a liquid together in equilibrium. Thus, there is no distinct boundary between the higher atmosphere, where the hydrogen behaves predominantly as a gas, and the deeper atmosphere, where it resembles a liquid. Unlike the tropopause on Earth, Saturn’s troposphere does not terminate at a solid surface but apparently extends tens of thousands of kilometres below the visible clouds, reaching temperatures of thousands of kelvins and pressures in excess of one million bars.

The magnetic field and magnetosphere

Saturn’s magnetic field resembles that of a simple dipole, or bar magnet, its north-south axis aligned to within 1° of Saturn’s rotation axis with the centre of the magnetic dipole at the centre of the planet. The polarity of the field, like Jupiter’s, is opposite that of Earth’s present field—i.e., the field lines emerge in Saturn’s northern hemisphere and reenter the planet in the southern hemisphere (see Earth: The geomagnetic field and magnetosphere). On Saturn a common magnetic compass would point south. Saturn’s field deviates measurably from a simple dipole field; this manifests itself both in a north-south asymmetry and in a slightly higher polar surface field than is predicted by a pure dipole model. At Saturn’s one-bar “surface” level, the maximum polar field is 0.8 gauss (north) and 0.7 gauss (south), very similar to Earth’s polar surface field, while the equatorial field is 0.2 gauss, compared with 0.3 gauss at Earth’s surface. Jupiter’s equatorial field, at 4.3 gauss, is more than 20 times stronger than Saturn’s. If one represents Saturn’s magnetic field as produced by a simple current loop with a specified magnetic moment (see magnetic dipole), then that magnetic moment is about 600 times Earth’s, whereas Jupiter’s magnetic moment is 20,000 times Earth’s.

Saturn’s magnetosphere is the teardrop-shaped region of space around the planet where the behaviour of charged particles, which come mostly from the Sun, is dominated by the planet’s magnetic field rather than by interplanetary magnetic fields. The rounded side of the teardrop extends sunward, forming a boundary, or magnetopause, with the outflowing solar wind at a distance of about 20 Saturn radii (1,200,000 km [750,000 miles]) from the centre of the planet but with substantial fluctuation due to variations in the pressure from the solar wind. On the opposite side of Saturn, the magnetosphere is drawn out into an immense magnetotail that extends to great distances.

Saturn’s inner magnetosphere, like the magnetospheres of Earth and Jupiter, traps a stable population of highly energetic charged particles, mostly protons, traveling in spiral paths along magnetic field lines. These particles form belts around Saturn similar to the Van Allen belts of Earth. Unlike the cases of Earth and Jupiter, Saturn’s charged-particle population is substantially depleted by absorption of the particles onto the surfaces of solid bodies that orbit within the field lines. Voyager data showed that “holes” exist in the particle populations on field lines that intersect the rings and the orbits of moons within the magnetosphere.

Saturn’s moons Titan and Hyperion orbit at distances close to the magnetosphere’s minimum dimensions, and they occasionally cross the magnetopause and travel outside Saturn’s magnetosphere. Energetic charged particles trapped in Saturn’s outer magnetosphere collide with neutral atoms in Titan’s upper atmosphere and energize them, causing erosion of the atmosphere. A halo of such energetic atoms was observed by the Cassini orbiter.

Saturn possesses ultraviolet auroras produced by the impact of energetic particles from the magnetosphere onto atomic and molecular hydrogen in Saturn’s polar atmosphere. Ultraviolet images of Saturn taken by the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in the late 1990s and early 21st century succeeded in capturing the auroral rings around the poles. These gave vivid evidence of the high symmetry of Saturn’s magnetic field and revealed details of the way the auroras respond to the solar wind and the Sun’s magnetic field.

The interior

Saturn’s low mean density is direct evidence that its bulk composition is mostly hydrogen. Under the conditions found within the planet, hydrogen behaves as a liquid rather than a gas at pressures above about one kilobar, corresponding to a depth of 1,000 km (600 miles) below the clouds; there the temperature is roughly 1,000 K (1,340 °F, 730 °C). Even as a liquid, molecular hydrogen is a highly compressible material, and to achieve Saturn’s mean density of 0.69 gram per cubic cm requires pressures above one megabar. This occurs at a depth of 20,000 km (12,500 miles) below the clouds, or about one-third of the distance to the planet’s centre.

Information about the interior structure of Saturn is obtained from studying its gravitational field, which is not spherically symmetrical. The rapid rotation and low mean density that lead to distortion of the planet’s physical shape also distort the shape of its gravitational field. The shape of the field can be measured precisely from its effects on the motion of spacecraft in the vicinity and on the shape of some of the components of Saturn’s rings. The degree of distortion is directly related to the relative amounts of mass concentrated in Saturn’s central regions as opposed to its envelope. Analysis of the distortion shows that Saturn is substantially more centrally condensed than Jupiter and therefore contains a significantly larger amount of material denser than hydrogen near its centre. Saturn’s central regions contain about 50 percent hydrogen by mass, while Jupiter’s contain approximately 67 percent hydrogen.

At a pressure of roughly two megabars and a temperature of about 6,000 K (10,300 °F, 5,730 °C), the fluid molecular hydrogen is predicted to undergo a major phase transition to a fluid metallic state, which resembles a molten alkali metal such as lithium. This transition occurs at a distance about halfway between Saturn’s cloud tops and its centre. Evidence from the planet’s gravitational field shows that the central metallic region is considerably denser than would be the case for pure hydrogen mixed only with solar proportions of helium. Excess helium that settled from the planet’s outer layers might account partly for the increased density. In addition, Saturn may contain a quantity of material denser than both hydrogen and helium with a total mass as much as 30 times that of Earth, but its precise distribution cannot be determined from available data. A rock and ice mixture of about 10–20 Earth masses is likely to be concentrated in a dense central core.

The calculated electrical conductivity of Saturn’s outer core of fluid metallic hydrogen is such that if slow circulation currents are present—as would be expected with the flow of heat to the surface accompanied by gravitational settling of denser components—there is sufficient dynamo action to generate the planet’s observed magnetic field. Saturn’s field thus is produced by essentially the same mechanism that produces Earth’s field (see dynamo theory). According to the dynamo theory, the deep field—that part of the field in the vicinity of the dynamo region near the core—may be quite irregular. On the other hand, the external part of the field that can be observed by spacecraft is quite regular, with a dipole axis that is nearly aligned with the rotation axis. Theories have been proposed that magnetic field lines are made more symmetrical to the rotational axis before they reach the surface by their passing through a nonconvecting, electrically conducting region that is rotating with respect to the field lines. The striking change observed in the magnetic field rotation period over the past 25 years, mentioned above, may be related to the action of deep electric currents involving the conducting core.

On average, Saturn radiates about twice as much energy into space than it receives from the Sun, primarily at infrared wavelengths between 20 and 100 micrometres. This difference indicates that Saturn, like Jupiter, possesses a source of internal heat. Kilogram for kilogram of mass, Saturn’s internal energy output at present is similar to Jupiter’s. But Saturn is less massive than Jupiter and so had less total energy content at the time both planets were formed. For it still to be radiating at Jupiter’s level means that its energy apparently is coming at least partially from a different source.

A calculation of thermal evolution shows that Saturn could have originated with a core of 10–20 Earth masses built up from the accretion of ice-rich planetesimals. On top of this, a large amount of gaseous hydrogen and helium from the original solar nebula would have accumulated by gravitational collapse. It is thought that Jupiter underwent a similar process of origin but that it captured an even greater amount of gas. On both planets the gas was heated to high temperatures—several tens of thousands of kelvins—in the course of the capture. Jupiter’s present internal energy output can then be understood as the residual cooling of an initially hot planet over the age of the solar system, some 4.6 billion years. For Saturn, application of such a mechanism predicts that the energy output of the planet should have dropped below the presently observed value about two billion years ago. It has been theorized that helium has been precipitating from solution in hydrogen and that its gradual sinking has liberated additional gravitational energy. As the helium separates out into droplets in the metallic phase of hydrogen and “rains” into deeper levels, potential energy is converted into the kinetic energy of droplet motion. Friction then damps this motion and converts it into heat, which is radiated into space, thus prolonging Saturn’s internal heat source. (It is thought that this process also has occurred—although to a much more limited extent—in Jupiter, which has a warmer interior and thus allows more helium to stay in solution.) The Voyagers’ detection of a substantial depletion of helium in Saturn’s atmosphere originally was taken as a vindication of this theory, but it has since been opened to question.

Saturn’s rings and moons

Although Saturn’s rings and moons may seem to constitute two groups of quite different entities, they form a single complex system of objects whose structures, dynamics, and evolution are intimately linked. The orbits of the innermost known moons fall within or between the outermost rings, and new moons continue to be found embedded in the ring structure. Indeed, the ring system itself can be considered to consist of myriad tiny moons—ranging from mere dust specks to car- and house-sized pieces—in their own individual orbits around Saturn. Because of the difficulty in distinguishing between the largest ring particles and the smallest moons, determining a precise number of moons for Saturn may not be possible.

The ring system

In 1610 Galileo’s first observations of Saturn with a primitive telescope prompted him to report:

Saturn is not a single star, but is a composite of three, which almost touch each other, never change or move relative to each other, and are arranged in a row along the zodiac, the middle one being three times larger than the lateral ones.

Two years later he was perplexed to find that the image in his telescope had become a single object; Earth had crossed Saturn’s ring plane, and, viewed edge on, the rings had essentially disappeared. Later observations showed Galileo that the curious lateral appendages had returned. Apparently he never deduced that the appendages were in fact a disk encircling the planet.

The Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens, who began studying Saturn with an improved telescope in 1655, eventually deduced the true shape of the rings and the fact that the ring plane was inclined substantially to Saturn’s orbit. He believed, however, that the rings were a single solid disk with a substantial thickness. In 1675 the Italian-born French astronomer Gian Domenico Cassini’s discovery of a large gap—now known as the Cassini division—within the disk cast doubt on the possibility of a solid ring, and the French mathematician and scientist Pierre-Simon Laplace published a theory in 1789 that the rings were made up of many smaller components. In 1857 the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell demonstrated mathematically that the rings could be stable only if they comprised a very large number of small particles, a deduction confirmed about 40 years later by the American astronomer James Keeler.

Today it is known that, while Saturn’s rings are enormous, they are also extremely thin. The major rings have a diameter of 270,000 km (170,000 miles), yet their thickness does not exceed 100 metres (330 feet), and their total mass comprises only about 3 × 1019 kg, about the mass of Saturn’s moon Mimas (see below Significant satellites). The entire ring system spans nearly 1,000,000 km (600,000 miles) when the faint outer rings are included. (See figure.)

Like the rings of the other giant planets, Saturn’s major rings lie within the classical Roche limit. This distance, which for the idealized case is 2.44 Saturn radii (147,000 km [91,300 miles]), represents the closest distance to which a fairly large moon can approach the centre of its more-massive planetary parent before it is torn apart by tidal forces. Conversely, small bodies within the Roche limit are prevented by tidal forces from aggregating into larger objects. The limit applies only to objects held together by gravitational attraction; it does not restrict the stability of a relatively small body for which molecular cohesion is more important than the tidal forces tending to pull it apart. Thus, small moons (and artificial satellites) with sizes in the range of tens of kilometres or less can persist indefinitely within the Roche limit.

Although the individual particles that make up Saturn’s rings cannot be seen directly, their size distribution can be deduced from their effect on the scattering of light and radio signals propagated through the rings from stars and spacecraft. This analysis reveals a broad and continuous spectrum of particle sizes, ranging from centimetres to several metres, with larger objects being significantly fewer in number than smaller ones. This distribution is consistent with the result expected from repeated collision and shattering of initially larger objects. In some parts of the rings, where collisions are apparently more frequent, even smaller (dust-sized) grains are present, but these have short lifetimes owing to a variety of loss mechanisms. Clouds of the smaller grains apparently acquire electric charges, interact with Saturn’s magnetic field, and manifest themselves in the form of moving, wedge-shaped spokes that extend radially over the plane of the rings. Although spokes were observed frequently during the Voyager encounters, they were not seen during Cassini’s initial orbits, possibly an indication of the effect of a different Sun angle on the production of charged grains. Larger bodies dubbed ring moons, on the order of several kilometres in diameter, may exist embedded within the major rings, but only a few have been detected. There is evidence that transient “rubble pile” moons are continually created and destroyed by the competing effects of gravity, collisions, and varying orbital speed within the dense rings.

The rings strongly reflect sunlight, and a spectroscopic analysis of the reflected light shows the presence of water ice. It is thus conceivable that the major rings were produced by the breakup of a moon the size and composition of Mimas. Because the rings are known to be irreversibly spreading due to collisions between particles and because there is no known mechanism for confining them indefinitely in their present configuration, many planetary scientists suspect that the postulated ring-forming breakup happened relatively recently, perhaps only some tens of millions of years ago.

The main ring system shows structures on many scales, ranging from the three broad major rings—named C, B, and A (in order of increasing distance from Saturn)—that are visible from Earth down to myriad individual component ringlets having widths on the order of kilometres. The structures have provided scientists a fertile field for investigating gravitational resonances and the collective effects of many small particles orbiting in close proximity. Although many of the structures have been explained theoretically, a large number remain enigmatic, and a complete synthesis of the system is still lacking. Because Saturn’s ring system may be an analogue of the original disk-shaped system of particles out of which the planets formed, an understanding of its dynamics and evolution has implications for the origin of the solar system itself (see solar system: Origin of the solar system).

The structure of the rings is broadly described by their optical depth as a function of distance from Saturn. Optical depth is a measure of the amount of electromagnetic radiation that is absorbed in passing through a medium—e.g., a cloud, the atmosphere of a planet, or a region of particles in space. It thus serves as an indicator of the average density of the medium. A completely transparent medium has an optical depth of 0; as the density of the medium increases, so does the numerical value. Optical depth depends on the wavelength of radiation as well as on the type of medium. In the case of Saturn’s rings, radio wavelengths of several centimetres and longer are largely unaffected by the smallest ring particles and thus encounter smaller optical depths than visible wavelengths and shorter.

The B ring is the brightest, thickest, and broadest of the rings. It extends from 1.52 to 1.95 Saturn radii and has optical depths between 0.4 and 2.5, the precise values dependent on both distance from Saturn and wavelength of light. (Saturn’s equatorial radius is 60,268 km [37,449 miles].) It is separated visually from the outer major ring, the A ring, by the Cassini division, the most prominent gap in the major rings. Lying between 1.95 and 2.02 Saturn radii and not devoid of particles, the Cassini division exhibits complicated variations in optical depth, with an average value of 0.1. The A ring extends from 2.02 to 2.27 Saturn radii and has optical depths of 0.4 to 1.0. Interior to the B ring lies the third major ring, the C ring (sometimes known as the crepe ring), at 1.23 to 1.52 Saturn radii, with optical depths near 0.1.

Interior to the C ring at 1.11 to 1.23 Saturn radii lies the extremely tenuous D ring, which has no measurable effect on starlight or radio waves passing through it and is visible only in reflected light. Exterior to the A ring lies the narrow F ring at 2.33 Saturn radii. The F ring is a complicated structure that, according to Cassini observations, may be a tightly wound spiral. Between the A and F rings, distributed along the orbit of the inner moon Atlas, is a tenuous band of material probably shed by the moon. Still farther out is the tenuous G ring, with an optical depth of only 0.000001; lying at about 2.8 Saturn radii, it was originally detected by its influence on charged particles in Saturn’s magnetosphere, and it is faintly discernible in Voyager images. The outermost known ring, the extremely broad and diffuse E ring, extends from 3 to 8 Saturn radii. Cassini observations have verified that the E ring is composed of ice particles originating from geysers (a form of ice volcanism, or cryovolcanism) at a thermally active region—a hot spot—near the south pole of the moon Enceladus. Those rings of Saturn that lie outside the A ring are analogous to Jupiter’s rings in that they are composed mostly of small particles continuously shed by moons.

Numerous gaps occur in the distribution of optical depth in the major ring regions. Some of the major gaps have been named after famous astronomers who were associated with studies of Saturn (see below Observations from Earth). In addition to the Cassini division, they include the Maxwell gap (1.45 Saturn radii), within the C ring; the Huygens gap (1.95 Saturn radii), at the outer edge of the B ring; the Encke gap (2.21 Saturn radii), a gap in the outer part of the A ring; and the Keeler gap (2.26 Saturn radii), almost at the outer edge of the A ring. Of the latter four gaps, only Encke was known prior to spacecraft exploration of Saturn.

Following the Voyager visits, scientists theorized that particles can be cleared from a region to form a gap by the gravitational effects of a moon about 10 km (6 miles) in size orbiting within the gap region. In 1990 one such moon, Pan, was discovered within the Encke gap in Voyager images and was recorded again in Cassini images. (See the video.) The anticipated corresponding moon within the Keeler gap was found in Cassini images in 2005. Similar moons may exist within the Huygens and Maxwell gaps.

Other theories indicate that a gap can also be cleared in a ring region that is in orbital resonance with a moon whose orbit is substantially internal or external to the ring. The condition for resonance is that the orbital periods of the moon and the ring particles be a ratio of whole numbers. When this is the case, a given ring particle will always make close approaches to the moon at the same points in its orbit, and gravitational perturbations to the particle’s orbit will build up over time, eventually forcing the particle out of precise resonance. If the moon orbits outside the ring, it receives angular momentum from the resonant ring particles and, in turn, launches a tightly wound spiral density wave in the ring, which ultimately clears a gap if the resonance is strong enough. The boundary region at the outer edge of the B ring and the inner edge of the Cassini division is in a 2:1 resonance with Mimas, meaning that the orbital period of Mimas is twice that of the ring particles located at that radius. As predicted from such a resonance, the boundary is not perfectly circular but shows deviations in radius that result in a two-lobed shape. Although the location of this boundary clearly shows the influence of the resonance in sculpting the inner edge of the Cassini division, the remainder of the division’s structure is not fully understood. Similarly, the outer edge of the A ring is in a 7:6 resonance with the co-orbital moons Janus and Epimetheus (see below Orbital and rotational dynamics) and is scalloped with seven lobes. Effects of other resonances of this kind are seen throughout the ring system, but many similar features cannot be so explained. In general, the number of known moons and resonances falls far short of what is needed to account for the countless thousands of ringlets and other fine structure in Saturn’s ring system.

Moons

Saturn possesses at least 47 60 known moons, data for which are summarized in the table. Names, traditional numbers, and orbital and physical characteristics for the first 18 moons discovered are listed individually; also included are preliminary data for Polydeuces, a moon discovered by Cassini that shares the orbit of the moon Dione (see below Orbital and rotational dynamics). Of the first 18 discovered, all but the much more distant moon Phoebe orbit within about 3.6 million km (2.2 million miles) of Saturn. Nine are more than 100 km (60 miles) in radius and were discovered telescopically before the 20th century; the others were found in an analysis of Voyager images in the early 1980s. Several additional inner moons (including Polydeuces)—tiny bodies with radii of 3–4 km (1.9–2.5 miles)—were discovered in Cassini spacecraft images beginning in 2004. All of the inner moons are regular, having prograde, low-inclination, and low-eccentricity orbits with respect to the planet. The eight largest are thought to have formed along Saturn’s equatorial plane from a protoplanetary disk of material, in much the same way as the planets formed around the Sun from the primordial solar nebula (see solar system: Origin of the solar system).

A second, outer group of moons lies beyond about 11 million km (6.8 million miles). They are irregular in that all of their orbits have large eccentricities and inclinations; about two-thirds revolve around Saturn in a retrograde fashion—they move opposite to the planet’s rotation. Except for Phoebe, they are less than about 20 km (12 miles) in radius. Some were discovered from Earth beginning in 2000 as the result of efforts to apply new electronic detection methods to the search for fainter—and hence smaller—objects in the solar system; others were found by Cassini. These outer bodies appear to be not primordial moons but rather captured objects or their fragments.

Significant satellites

Titan is Saturn’s largest moon and the only moon in the solar system known to have clouds and a dense atmosphere. The diameter of its solid body is 5,150 km (3,200 miles), which makes it, after Jupiter’s Ganymede, the second largest moon in the solar system. Its relatively low mean density of 1.88 grams per cubic cm implies that its interior is a mixture of rocky materials (silicates) and ices, the latter likely being mostly water ice mixed with frozen ammonia and methane. Titan’s atmosphere, which has a surface pressure of 1.5 bars (50 percent greater than on Earth’s surface), is predominantly nitrogen with about 5 percent methane and traces of a variety of other carbon-containing compounds. Its surface, veiled in a thick brownish red haze, remained largely a mystery until exploration of the Saturnian system by Cassini-Huygens. The spacecraft’s observations showed Titan to have a complex surface topography sculpted by precipitation, flowing liquids, wind, a few impacts, and possible volcanic and tectonic activity—many of the same processes that have shaped Earth’s surface. (A fuller treatment of the moon is given in the article Titan.)

Saturn’s other moons are much smaller than Titan and, except for Enceladus, possess no detectable atmospheres. (Cassini detected a localized water-vapour atmosphere in the vicinity of Enceladus’s south polar hot spot.) Their low mean densities (between 1 and 1.5 grams per cubic cm), as well as spectroscopic analyses of their surface solids, indicate that they are rich in ices, probably mostly water ice perhaps mixed with ices of more-volatile substances such as ammonia. At Saturn’s distance from the Sun, the ices are so cold that they behave mechanically like rock and can retain impact craters. As a result, the surfaces of these moons bear a superficial resemblance to the cratered rocky surface of Earth’s Moon, but there are important differences.

Mimas reveals a heavily cratered surface similar in appearance to the lunar highlands, but it also possesses one of the largest impact structures, in relation to the body’s size, in the solar system. The crater Herschel, named in honour of Mimas’s discoverer, the 19th-century English astronomer William Herschel, is 130 km (80 miles) across, one-third the diameter of Mimas itself. It is roughly 10 km (6 miles) deep and has outer walls about 5 km (3 miles) high.

The surface of Enceladus reflects more light than newly fallen snow. Voyager images showed few large craters; the presence of smooth, crater-free areas and extensive ridged plains gave convincing evidence that fairly recent internal activity, possibly within the last 100 million years, has caused widespread melting and resurfacing. Spectral data from Cassini show that Enceladus’s surface is almost pure water ice. The moon’s south polar hot spot is at a temperature of 140 K (−208 °F, −133 °C), far hotter than is predicted from solar heating alone; the region also exhibits enigmatic geologic structures dubbed “tiger stripes.” The water-ice particles that form the E ring are being expelled from Enceladus at the rate of about 1,000 metric tons per year. They have sizes in the range of one micrometre and could persist for only a few thousand years. Thus, the events on Enceladus that have produced the present ring must have been occurring within the recent past.

Tethys, although larger than Enceladus, shows little evidence of internal activity. Its heavily cratered surface appears quite old, although it displays subtle features indicative of creep or viscous flow in its icy crust. Dione and Rhea have heavily cratered surfaces similar to the lunar highlands, but with bright patches that may be freshly exposed ice. Although Dione is smaller than Rhea, it has more evidence of recent internal activity, including resurfaced plains and fracture systems.

The surface of Iapetus remains to be studied in detail, but it shows a striking difference in reflectivity between its leading and trailing hemispheres. The leading hemisphere is remarkably dark, the darkest material concentrated at the apex of orbital motion. The composition and origin of this material have been topics of lively debate. Initial Cassini spectral data show the presence of carbon dioxide, organics, and cyanide compounds. The trailing hemisphere, which is as much as 10 times more reflective than the leading one, is heavily cratered and is mostly water ice. The reflectivity difference is caused by dark material collecting on the moon’s leading hemisphere and absorbing more sunlight, which heats up this region. Any water ice in this region turns to water vapour; the vapour then condenses onto the trailing hemisphere and freezes. The low mean density of Iapetus suggests that the moon as a whole is mostly ices.

Orbital and rotational dynamics

The orbital and rotational dynamics of Saturn’s moons have unusual and puzzling characteristics, some of which are related to their interactions with the rings. For example, the three small moons Janus, Epimetheus, and Pandora orbit near the outer edge of the main ring system and are thought to have been receiving angular momentum, amounting to a minuscule but steady outward push, from ring particles through collective gravitational interactions. The effects of this process would be to reduce the spreading of the rings caused by collisions between ring particles and to drive these moons to ever larger orbits. Because of the small size of the moons, scientists have found it difficult to find a mechanism by which this process could have endured over the age of the solar system without driving the moons far beyond their current positions. The sharpness of the outer edge of the main ring system and the present orbits of such inner moons as Atlas are puzzling, and they appear to support the idea that the current ring system is much younger than Saturn itself.

Pandora and its nearest neighbour moon, Prometheus, have been dubbed shepherd moons because of their influence on ring particles. During Voyager 1’s flyby, the two bodies were discovered orbiting on either side of the narrow F ring, which itself had been found only a year earlier by Pioneer 11. The moons’ gravitational interactions with the F ring produce a “shepherding” effect, in which the ring’s constituent particles are kept confined to a narrow band. Prometheus, the inner shepherd, transmits angular momentum to the ring particles, pushing the ring outward and itself inward, while Pandora, the outer shepherd, receives angular momentum from the ring particles, pushing the ring inward and itself outward. Cassini obtained a spectacular video record of this process, in which complex wavelike bands of particles are drawn out from the F ring as the shepherds pass it. (The term shepherd often is used to describe any moon that constrains the extent of a ring through gravitational forces. Consequently, in this expanded sense, moons such as Janus and Epimetheus, whose ring effects are described in the paragraph above, and gap-creating moons such as Pan also qualify as shepherds.)

Janus and Epimetheus are co-orbital moons—they share the same average orbit. Every few years they make a close approach, interacting gravitationally in such a way that one transmits angular momentum to the other, which forces the latter into a slightly higher orbit and the former into a slightly lower orbit. At the next close approach, the process repeats in the opposite direction. Tethys and Dione also have their own co-orbital satellites, but, because Tethys and Dione are much more massive than their co-orbiters, there is no significant exchange of angular momentum. Instead, Tethys’s two co-orbiters, Telesto and Calypso, are located at the stable Lagrangian points along Tethys’s orbit, leading and following Tethys by 60°, respectively, analogous to the Trojan asteroids in Jupiter’s orbit. Dione’s Trojan-like companions, Helene and Polydeuces, lead and follow it by 60°, respectively, on average.

Several pairs of moons are in stable dynamic resonances—i.e., the members of each pair pass one another in their orbits in a periodic fashion, interacting gravitationally in a way that preserves the regularity of these encounters. In such a resonance the orbital periods of a pair of moons are related to each other approximately in the ratio of small whole numbers. For example, the orbital periods of Hyperion and the nearer Titan, at 21.28 at 15.94 days, respectively (see the table), are in the ratio 4:3, which means that Titan completes four orbits around Saturn in the time that it takes Hyperion to complete three. Titan and Hyperion always pass most closely at Hyperion’s apoapse, the farthest point of its elliptical orbit. Because Titan has more than 50 times the mass of Hyperion and always transmits the most momentum to the smaller moon at the same points along its orbit, Hyperion is forced by these periodic “shoves” into a relatively elongated (eccentric) orbit. Analogously, the moon pairs Dione and Enceladus and Tethys and Mimas have orbital periods in the ratio 2:1.

Because resonances between pairs of moons can force orbital eccentricities to relatively large values, they are potentially important in the geologic evolution of the bodies concerned. Ordinarily, tidal interactions between Saturn and its nearer moons—the cyclic deformations in each body caused by the gravitational attraction of the other—tend to reduce the eccentricity of the moons’ orbits as well as to brake their spins in such a way that they rotate at the same rate as they revolve around Saturn. This state, called synchronous rotation, is common in the solar system, being the case, for example, for Earth’s Moon and several of Jupiter’s nearer moons. For a moon that rotates with respect to its planet, the internal deformation is dynamic; it travels cyclically around the moon and generates heat by internal friction. Once a moon is in synchronous rotation, it always keeps the same hemisphere facing the planet and the same hemispheres forward and rearward in its orbit; the deformation no longer travels but remains stationary in the moon’s reference frame, and frictional heating does not occur. However, even a moon in synchronous rotation experiences tidal interaction if it is forced into an eccentric orbit by resonance; as it travels alternately farther from and closer to its planet, the ensuing dynamic deformation heats its interior. The most dramatic example of such a moon is Jupiter’s Io, whose resonance with another Jovian moon, Europa, forces it into an eccentric path. As Io moves through Jupiter’s powerful gravitational field, it is heated so intensely that it is the most volcanically active body in the solar system.

Although calculations indicate that the present tides on Saturn’s moons are not particularly significant as a heating mechanism, this may not have been true in the past. Furthermore, as discussed above, the hot “tiger-stripe” region of Enceladus is the present-day source of the icy material for the diffuse E ring in which it orbits. The cause of the region’s thermal activity remains to be deduced, but it is likely to be related to some form of tidal deformation.

Hyperion is a spectacular exception to the rule in which tidal interactions force moons into synchronous rotation. Hyperion’s orbital eccentricity and highly nonspherical shape, which is unusual for a body as large as it is, have led to a complicated interaction between its spin and orbital angular momentum. The outcome of this interaction is a behaviour that is described mathematically as chaotic. Although the fleeting Voyager encounters found Hyperion to be rotating nonsynchronously with a period of about 13 days, chaos theory applied to Voyager data and subsequent Earth-based observations of the moon shows that it is actually tumbling in an essentially unpredictable manner. Hyperion is the only object known in the solar system to be in chaotic rotation.

Observations from Earth

Even under the best telescopic viewing conditions possible from Earth’s surface, features on Saturn smaller than a few thousand kilometres cannot be resolved. Thus, the great detail exhibited in the rings and atmosphere was largely unknown prior to spacecraft observations. Even the A ring’s Encke gap, reported in 1837 by the German astronomer Johann Franz Encke, was considered dubious for well over a century until it was confirmed in 1978 by the American astronomer Harold Reitsema, who used measurements of an eclipse of the moon Iapetus by the rings to improve on normal Earth-based resolution.

Modern research on Saturn from Earth’s vicinity relies on a variety of special telescopic techniques. Infrared spectroscopy of the rings, atmosphere, and moons has yielded considerable information about their composition and thermal balance. Spatial resolution of the rings and atmospheric structures on the scale of kilometres is obtained by observing light from bright stars that pass behind the planet as seen from Earth. Such an instance occurred in 1989, when both Saturn and Titan occulted the bright star 28 Sagittarii, allowing astronomers to observe ring and atmospheric structures at a level of detail not seen since the Voyager encounters. The 1990 appearance of the Great White Spot in Saturn’s atmosphere was successfully observed not only with surface-based telescopes but also with the Hubble Space Telescope above the distorting effect of Earth’s atmosphere. In 1995, when Earth passed through the ring plane, the edge-on viewing geometry permitted a direct determination of the ring thickness and a precise measurement of the rate of precession of Saturn’s rotational axis.

Spacecraft exploration

The first spacecraft to visit Saturn, the U.S. Pioneer 11, was one of a pair of probes launched in the early 1970s to Jupiter. Though a retargeting was not part of the original objective, mission scientists took advantage of Pioneer 11’s close encounter with Jupiter’s gravitational field to alter the spacecraft’s trajectory and send it on to a successful flyby of Saturn. In 1979 Pioneer 11 passed through Saturn’s ring plane at a distance of only 38,000 km (24,000 miles) from the A ring and flew within 21,000 km (13,000 miles) of its atmosphere.

The twin spacecraft that followed, the U.S. Voyagers 1 and 2, were launched initially toward Jupiter in 1977. They carried much more elaborate imaging equipment and were specifically designed for multiple-planet flybys and for accomplishing specific scientific objectives at each destination. Like Pioneer 11, Voyagers 1 and 2 used Jupiter’s mass in gravity-assist maneuvers to redirect their trajectories to Saturn, which they encountered in 1980 and ’81, respectively. Together the two spacecraft returned tens of thousands of images of Saturn and its rings and moons.

The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft was launched in 1997 as a joint project of the space agencies of the United States, Europe, and Italy. It followed a complicated trajectory involving gravity-assist flybys of Venus (twice), Earth, and Jupiter that brought it to the Saturnian system in mid-2004. Weighing almost six metric tons when loaded with propellants, the interplanetary craft was one of the largest, most expensive, and most complex built to that time. It comprised a Saturn orbiter, Cassini, designed to carry out studies of the planet, rings, and moons for several years, and a probe, Huygens, that descended by parachute through Titan’s atmosphere to a solid-surface landing in early 2005. For about three hours during its descent and from the surface, Huygens transmitted measurements and images to Cassini, which relayed them to scientists on Earth.